


Trying To Make Sense

by EnemyMine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV Male Character, POV Peter Hale, messing with memories is bad, season 4-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 16:07:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11763480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnemyMine/pseuds/EnemyMine
Summary: Peter's memories have been messed with and he is so not amused.





	Trying To Make Sense

He had loved his sister. Dearly and deeply. But if she was still alive today, he would have planned her slow and painful demise by now.  
Not because of his insane and sadistic tendencies, mind you. He might have done a lot of things that might let anyone believe in such notions about him, but as long as he was in possession of his mental faculties, he praised himself as being quite level-headed and downright reasonable.   
His current companions might beg to differ, but then they all had one or the other grudge with him these days. Wasn't like he had truly been able to help it at the time!

He had loved his niece. Dearly and deeply. If it was not for the little bit that made her death prerequisite to his death and subsequent resurrection, in a more sound mind and body, he would give anything to try and undo the act.  
But there truly was nothing to be done. Laura had not been aware of certain methods to ensure a rebirth from the ashes. Had not known that such might be needed, when she had entered the old Hale land that night. Her education had been sorely lacking in the regards of the old rituals and methods.   
Another thing to blame Talia for.

Obviously Peter Hale's late sister had not been able to foresee her untimely demise which thus cut short Laura's education to become alpha. How could she, no one had seen that coming and it was only now, so many years later, that Peter had been able to put the puzzle pieces together that lead to the Hale Fire, as it had come to be known. For him it was the night of the gruesome death of most of his pack.  
Eleven members of pack and family, some purely human in nature, had died a horrific death and Peter himself had made it out more dead than alive. Laura and Derek had been spared due to some school event, that kept them longer than usual. How Cora had made it out unscathed was still a mystery to him. Not so much her running and not stopping until she was found and taken in by a pack in South America. After all that was exactly what the young were taught to do in the worst case scenario. His only remaining niece had been very young still, had not even been able to shift yet.  
It was different for her older siblings. Laura must have felt the alpha spark awaken in her the moment her mother died. Transition of power was an immediate thing after all. As older sister and new alpha she would have immediately taken charge of Derek, who turned out to be the only beta left apart from a badly burnt and comatose Peter.  
But instead of remaining in the lands of her ancestors, taking over the duties of protector of the supernatural in Beacon Hills and the Nemeton, Laura had decided to leave everything behind. Her own version of running.  
Maybe she had not known better. She was after all still very young and had no real experience with the neighboring packs and the help she would have received, if she just would have asked. After all it was a time when Ennis had not yet followed the call of Deucalion to slaughter his entire pack.  
Maybe running was even the best for both of them to cope mentally. Especially Derek, who as Peter had learned had involuntarily helped in extinguishing his entire family.

Oh, Derek. No matter what those teenagers that now ran with his nephew, and more often than not tripped him, thought, he truly cared for the boy. Well, obviously man now. But one must forgive him for still seeing the wide-eyed beta with a curiosity that knew no bounds and an incredible willpower, but still with a heart of gold, that the young man once had been. After all Peter had spent 6 years in the land between life and death and missed out on many things.  
Derek reminded him of himself a bit. Naturally not completely. The beta had always just been that, where Peter had originally been destined for more. If his darn sister had not suddenly discovered some hidden strength during his time in high school. Suddenly flashing red eyes and being able to complete the full transformation would make any were the new prospective alpha, no matter that there had already one born and trained.

Talia had possessed the same willpower as Derek. But where he had been content with his lot in life, she had pushed for more until her spark delivered. Since their old alpha died not too long afterward not a lot discussion was to be had. The only thing that was left to do for Peter not to be cast out as omega was arrange himself in the role of the pack's enforcer.  
He still felt as though he should have been the alpha. The knowledge and the feeling of that alpha spark just beyond his reach thrummed through his veins every second of every day.

Peter could admit, that his nephew actually did a pretty good job at it. Surprisingly since he had never been in line for the job. With his nose in the books at all times, Derek had shaped up to be more of an emissary. Not the crap job Deaton portrayed it as being. But a true emissary, a mediator between the packs, the speaker of the alpha in their absence. No druidic hocus-pocus and cryptic pieces of carefully selected wisdom. Peter still did not understand how Talia could have made that choice.

But then he didn't understand a lot of his late sisters decisions. Her oh so carefully planned way of peace and balance, which quite literally came to burn her. If his sister had not been so busy meddling in the affairs of others, she might have noticed her son being led on by that hunter bitch. Okay, so Peter hadn't realized it himself, but then he had been quite busy at the time with keeping the pack safe. There had been a lot of unnatural deaths during that year. And when the banshee suddenly screamed for herself, well that was a thing that truly could not have been ignored.

That banshee had been Lydia's grandmother. No wonder the little minx turned out to be so gifted. Still not reaching her full potential of course, but then it was not like there was another banshee around to teach her. Since someone thought it was a good idea to have the old one admitted to Eichen House and trepanated. Well, she snuffed it and suddenly all hell broke lose in little Beacon Hills. But the alpha of the Hale Pack could not been bothered, instead she wasted precious time and energy with a peace treaty with hunters. Ironic really, that a huntress let to her downfall.

Maybe if Talia had simply been a mother for once. Yes, Peter knew the kids had adored her, but she always had that aura of coldness around her. The kids' father had been a great guy, but Talia had made it very clear that he was not part of the pack. He had been the kind of friend with benefits, who additionally had no problem to procreate. So the guy came and went until he stopped returning.  
He had been from a strong pack in New York, the very one that at least offered some protection to Laura and Derek after the fire. If Peter was just slightly more cynical than he already was, he would imply that Talia had chosen him for his bloodline and nothing else. Maybe he did anyway.

Especially in the light of the most recent revelation about dear old sister's meddling. Which simply did not make sense at all in Peter's admittedly scrambled brain.  
Okay, so he apparently fathered a child with a werecoyote, today better known as the Desert Wolf. And according to the currently available evidence, which included his now as highly unreliable regarded mind – Thank you very much, Talia. Bitch. - said mother had assumed powers being stolen from her by the infant, so Talia resorted to take away HIS memories of everything, give the supernatural child to unsuspecting humans, and send Corinne on her merry way.  
Now it would have made sense, if Corinne truly was out to kill the child to take HER memories and send her on her merry way, while the kid would have grown up in the Hale Pack with his father. As it should have been.

There were however factors to the equation that simply did not add up. First the adoption into a human family. Even if it still would have proven necessary to hide the child away, there would have been ways to give it to another pack. Even weres tended to have problems conceiving sometimes, so it was not unheard of to give parentless children to childless parents. It worked pretty much the same way as any human adoption agency. Which always granted a reasonable amount of secrecy.

The second factor was the whole stealing of powers thing, that seemed to be the driving force behind everything. It was simply a concept that did not exist. No one was stealing powers, when their spark emerged. You were simply born with it. If you were born to the supernatural, the same spark would later activate and make you a were or a banshee or whatever kind of being you were genetically capable of being. If a spark was within a human host, which was actually quite common, the same one would activate upon the bite. If there was no spark however the body would treat the bite as an illness to get rid of. Only there was no way to undo it, so death was the only option.  
Mixed breeds of werecoyotes and -wolves were also pretty common in the Southern states and across the border. True their nature differed in that werecoyotes much like their natural counterpart preferred to run alone or in pairs, but as any kind of wolf they adapted easily with some patience. Werewolf packs were also known to accommodate the special needs of their werecoyote members by offering secluded living quarters and certain freedoms. They were not savages for Heaven's sake! Not matter what that damn mongrel of a so called True Alpha – capital letters – might still believe.

Anyway, nowhere in the literature was any mention of powers being stolen through conception or birth. Or returned by killing the child for that matter.   
As werewolves knew, powers could be transferred willingly. To draw pain, even to give up part of their spark so another could retain life. But the spark replenished itself, since it was something imbued into every molecule of every cell. Pretty much simple human genetics, only with a twist.  
With the right implement it might be possible to steal powers by reversing the process and there might be species out there that could actually get their sustenance that way. But if those existed, then not during any time the Hale Pack had protected these lands. The archives in the vault were quite thorough. Werecoyotes however did not nor have they ever possessed that kind of ability.

So, why in the name of the Nemeton did Talia erase the knowledge of his child from his mind? And could he even trust the resurfaced memories to show the whole picture? After all with the knowledge of completely stolen ones, he had started to scrutinize others.   
A thing Cora had told him and Stiles resonated. That the Derek she knew was different. Back then he had thought, she was referring to him now being in charge and broodier. His nephew was a pretty broken man inside. Strong, but broken. The Derek Cora would have remembered from before the fire had been carefree, trusting, open. But in hindsight Peter knew she had been referring to the Derek of the story he had just told the teens. Of how Derek came to have blue eyes.

He KNEW everything in him told him, he was telling the truth. But when he now recalled the events, saw the memory visions in his mind scape, he FELT something off.  
The Derek Cora had known had been different. And if Peter was honest with himself, the Derek he had known was too.   
Up to the very fire, Derek had never shown signs of trauma. He surely wouldn't have been running around laughingly with his sisters, if he had just been witness and cause to someone rejecting the bite. And no one in their right mind would believe him to be capable of falling for that hunter-bitch, if he had just buried his first love like that.  
No, Derek had been different. Which had made him susceptible to Kate Argent's seduction, who in turn used his openness to extinguish eleven lives in one night. But being cause for many more.

Yes, Peter blamed her for his deeds. He had spent 6 freaking years in a coma, dammit! Not too mention his stint in Eichen House, which admittedly was hazy in his mind, but he would recognize that oppressive feel of mountain ash in the very fabric of the stone anywhere. Something had happened to him there too, they had done something to him. But the only clear memory he could access was of him being wheeled into the showers and a droplet of his blood falling to the tiles before being washed down the drain.   
He would, under no circumstances ask Derek to help him! No way in hell claws ever got near his brain ever again! It was scrambled enough by now.

Anyway, he blamed the Argent woman for all that happened after he awoke in the nursing home. Peter might have been hungry to retain his former powers as prospective alpha ever since Talia had taken that chance away from him, but he had never been driven to that kind of insanity. And no matter what anyone claimed, he truly had loved his pack. His family.

Still he would throttle his sister if she was alive. The more he thought about everything that had happened since his sudden reawakening, the more he was convinced that everything started to spiral out of control with her meddling with his mind.  
Okay, he could admit he had been a bastard before. But if things were really like he now suspected, then Paige had been his first love and he had been responsible for her death. It must have been. The pictures he was able to recall looked too much like the early 1990s and he could not for the life of him figure out when he had the change in eye color otherwise.   
It must have been him holding her beneath the roots of the Nemeton! Derek had not even known about the existence of that tree, when the Darach had gone around sacrificing people left and right. It was the sacrifice of the teens opening up the way for them to find their missing parents right there in the root cellar. But Peter had found his way despite everything on his own to take the life of the Darach.

He knew Ennis from way back, when Talia, him and Deucalion and their respective packs had been in negotiations about how the werewolf community should deal with the hunters who tried to destroy their way of living. Especially now that the old Hale alpha – their father – had passed away.   
Still he had told Cora and Stiles that Derek had been witness to those meetings. The boy had barely been born back then! He never even met Ennis before the Alpha Pack came to Beacon Hills.  
Ennis had been a great guy to talk to the beta, who should have been alpha. Peter had build a rapport over that with the young alpha of the different pack. They also shared their misgivings about Talia's new politics regarding humans. 

Having them in the pack was nothing new. Sometimes they just turned out to be better suited partners, it didn't matter if they refused the bite or not, and their offspring mostly turned out to be supernatural anyway. Those that didn't, still grew up as full members, but most would chose to leave for the human world once they were adults and fell in love. It was simply the way it always had been. But Talia wanted them now to remain pack, even when they left. And she wanted to bring in more outsiders. Starting with her choice of emissary.  
Peter wouldn't have wanted Paige to leave him. Ever. Not after just having lost practically every other certainty in his life. But humans left. Especially those that young. Convincing Ennis to give her the bite for that reason alone, would have been easy for the young beta. They shared the same convictions.  
No, Derek had never known Ennis before he had slaughtered his entire pack. He only knew the man, who tried to take away his land and killed his betas. All in the name of luring the True Alpha to their side. Who wasn't even that super-powered doggy yet.

Just who might have yapped about Scott McCall's potential to Deucalion?   
Derek had not been aware that such a thing might actually exist. Peter himself only remembered some obscure references in old texts from the vault. Nothing he ever read however fit with that bothersome teen, so even if he would have entertained the rare possibility, he would have never told anyone about it.  
He still heard the nonsense Deaton sprouted. Strength of character, unwillingness to kill! HA!  
That ungrateful mongrel might be unwilling to kill to even save his own life, but that was hardly a show of strength of character. More like the petulant actions of a child, which simply refused to accept change. That boy was not even close to being alpha material. He barely deserved to be a beta. 

Peter really should have bitten Stiles that night! But being saddled with that for a life-time… No, better to reconsider. Then again...   
He offered the bite to him. The now young man was different than his compatriots. Completely fragile, but so damn headstrong. He was infallibly loyal and willing to do what needed to be done. For his family and friends, his pack and the whole town. Not too mention that there obviously was a spark hidden in that skinny frame. Stiles would survive the bite for sure.   
But maybe he would not turn to become a werewolf. He had shown an affinity for magical things, but also for electricity. So he might turn out to be some form of druid.   
Then there had been the possession. Normally a spark could be, well, sparked by great trauma. The Nogitsune surely qualified. Still Stiles seemed barely touched by it all. Insomnia and nightmares did not count. The young man still fought with his nephew and their merry band of teenagers, still only armed with a baseball bat. Still capable of feats in battle no human boy should be capable of. But still no sign of his spark awakening. His name added to the benefactor's list of dead supernaturals by Lydia... 

It was frustrating. Especially since Peter was sure, he would be able to figure it all out if he just could trust his own memories from before the fire. That whole damn year was important to the mess they were currently in.  
During that time-span Lydia's grandmother had screamed for herself, while she obviously knew about the list of the benefactor. She might even have prepared the current files. Her powers after all had been mature, where her granddaughter still struggled with the voices in the ether.  
A lot of supernatural beings had been killed by various means during that year. Now it could be explained by a hitlist just like the one these ragtag packs were dealing with currently. Back then it seemed like a very unlucky streak of accidents and overzealous hunter activity.

Come to think of it, something very much like that had happened the year his father had died. At least one explanation of why his memories of Paige could have been tangled up with the happenings of 2005 through Talia's messing. There had been emergency meetings of the pack emissaries and alphas all over the state too. Not knowing what exactly Talia had “touched” with her claws, it was easy to see, how there might have been some wrong neurological connections being made.

2005 was also the year Malia Tate, who apparently was Peter's daughter – or so current evidence or lack thereof suggested – ended up alone in the woods. Which the child somehow survived for all these years, without prior training, pretty much going feral as a coyote.   
This whole being in full shift for years-business deeply troubled Peter. Achieving the full shift was a rare commodity. Something that only happened once every couple generations. So even if Malia truly was his daughter and she somehow inherited the trait from him, though he himself had never been capable of it, it was highly unlikely for her to reach that level. Not with her other half being werecoyote, who simply were not known to achieve full transformation ever. Basically only those werewolves with a certain European linage could hope for it to pop up every now and then. One the Hale Pack possessed and Peter was certain the New York Pack of the children's father had too.  
But after all it came back down to genetics. Unlikely was not impossible. 

Still it was a state of mind – or so Talia had explained in days long past – which needed to be reached. Satomi sure had loved all that zen spouting nonsense. No matter if he bought into that integral way of viewing things, it was not something a young frightened child would manage shortly after surviving a car crash in which she had seen those she thought to be her mother and sister die. Especially not on the first shift ever.   
If that was the version of events one was willing to believe.   
Malia was an unreliable witness at best. Her mind had not taken kindly to being stuck in feral mode for so long and Eichen House and the ensuing hijinks surrounding Stiles' possession could not have helped matters any. Proof being that this girl, mentally barely in her teens by now, declared the sarcastic little shit to be her mate!

Stiles was a lot of things, but not her mate. Not that that concept actually existed in the sense that it did for natural creatures of the lupine persuasion. They were still people, dammit.  
The heightened sense of smell might tell if one might be a bit more compatible in sexual matters. It clearly gave away enough personal traits to make an educated guess if pursuing a relationship would even make sense. But it was not a cloud of pheromones taking away all conscious thought and declaring “mine”.  
Add to that little biological fact, that Stiles very much was the first human being she truly had contact with after her change back and his inability to not help people. Well, she would simply need the security of someone she would trust, Peter gathered. The teen went along with it because… Probably because at the end of the day he was still a hormonal teenager, who just got over the permanent rejection of his first love. Also because his damn nephew had his head so far up his own ass, that he seemed to be completely oblivious to all the pheromones the teen put out whenever he came close to Derek…

Sometimes it really would have been easier, if Peter just would have stayed dead. But he had not been able to. He had to bite Lydia and infuse his spirit into her.   
After having been restored to a somewhat sound mind in a healthy body, the werewolf often asked himself, how he had even been able to arrange for that eventuality. He had been insane and practically feral at the time, the only driving need he had felt had been to bite. To become alpha and to bite. Change people so the pack would grow, so he could be the alpha of a strong pack. The newly changed would have never questioned his sanity or their purpose. They would have followed his howl and joined the hunt.  
If Derek had not made an appearance back in Beacon Hills, that would probably be exactly what would have happened. But he came back and brought forth questions and attention. Peter's new beta refused his alpha and things were otherwise pretty convoluted in his mind. The only thing he clearly remembered was that Peter had seen Derek as competition, as a potential challenger. So he went after him, not minding that he was his last living relative. So everyone thought at that time.

But Derek was always a strong one. If he had not been made emissary, he would also have made a great enforcer. Now he was the alpha of his own pack. Small as it was, but still so much better than the teenage group Scott McCall had gathered.  
At least Derek was a true leader to his pack. That's why Peter stayed with him after his resurrection, though he technically was an omega at this point. Getting killed by the new alpha pretty much ensures the booting. The bond had not yet recovered and for whatever reasons Peter actually did not hurry with it. Maybe it were the scrambled synapses.

He should ensure his place in the new Hale Pack. Now that Cora had returned and his offspring had been located seemed like the best time to emerge from the ashes like a Phoenix. Well, the mythological one at least. There might be actually a real creature running around. Wouldn't want to get that Parish guy confused. Well, more than he already was, surviving being set on fire like that. Unscathed. Now, that was something Peter could be jealous of. Not knowing however who and what he was….

This whole mess starting from his reawakening until now somehow shared a starting point. Something he FELT he should know. It was like an itch, he just could not scratch. Just below the surface.   
Beacon Hills always had been a home for the supernatural. It gained his name not for nothing. The Nemeton saw to that. But the amount of activity that had been drawn to this relatively small town was unparalleled. Which of course included the deaths. For at least twenty odd years something was not like it was supposed to.  
It was a possibility that him spilling Paige's blood in the root cellar beneath the Nemeton might have reactivated some of its dormant powers. The ancient tree was not finicky about how sacrifices came to be.   
It was all a convoluted mess. And thanks to his thrice damned sister Peter could not make rhyme nor reason of it all. He had loved her dearly, but he could throttle her right now. At least.


End file.
